Cinnamon Rolls and Closure
by ProngsletIsMyHero73180
Summary: Of all the places he feared he might run into someone from his past, a Cinnabon in Omaha just wasn't one of them.


Of all the places he feared he might run into someone from his past, a Cinnabon in Omaha just wasn't one of them.

Jesse and Brock – because there was no way, once he realized Brock was not with Andrea's grandmother, but in the system, that he was going to let him go to foster care – spent three months circling the United States before the money ran out. It had been easy, up until that point – surprisingly so. But Jesse had "skipped out" on probation almost a year ago, at this point, and any search party that might have been after him had long-since been moved onto other cases – such as the Heisenberg massacre that Jesse tried to ignore on the news, still unable to believe he'd escaped. But he had, and he'd gotten Brock out of "that place" (as they were calling it), despite his initial worry that he wouldn't be able to get anywhere near him.

But if working with Heisenberg had taught him anything, it was that there was _always_ a way. You just had to be clever enough to find it.

But Jesse wasn't a millionaire anymore, and three months of their cross-country road trip later, the money he hadn't handed to the police was running dangerously low. Although, if he was being honest with himself, he didn't really regret getting rid of the five million – that money had been tainted in the worst possible way, and he didn't want those stains anywhere near Brock. Not again.

Besides, Brock was eight-years old and getting restless, and Jesse figured he should probably be enrolled in school or something, right?

So here they were, in a service station off of Interstate 80, on their way to Wyoming – the least populated state in America, according to an Almanac Jesse had picked up back in Indiana. He'd asked Brock where he wanted to go if he could pick anywhere, but Brock had only responded with "to the mountains", so he'd turned the car toward the Rockies. He figured they could settle down in some small mountain town there, where people were less likely to ask for paperwork for every little thing. Or so he hoped. And if they needed to leave the country, weren't they less likely to run into problems with security in a smaller airport? He didn't know much about all that, but he knew he had to figure it out – he had to think like Heisenberg now.

He wondered when he had started thinking of his old teacher as Heisenberg. Somehow, it was more bearable than thinking of Mr. White.

But whether it was smart or not, whether it would work or not, it was a plan, at least, and a plan was better than the aimless wandering they'd been doing so far. So when Brock headed to the bathroom, Jesse wasn't worried, for once. Everything seemed fine. Like it was all finally going to work out.

Then he stopped at the damn Cinnabon.

Jesse Pinkman and Saul Goodman stared at each other over the counter in a frozen kind of horror. Saul was working the cash register, and wearing an apron, and Jesse could not believe – _could not believe _– that this was happening here, of all places, of all the times they could have been caught, it was in a Cinnabon in Nebraska?! But then his brain caught up, and he took in Saul's equally fearful expression, and the nametag that read "Gary."

"Uh, hi, Gary," he forced himself to say, as close to light and airy as he could get.

"Hello, sir," Gary numbly replied. "What can I get for you?"

"Just two… regular… um…"

"Coming right up!" he exclaimed, practically diving away to fill the order.

The whole thing was too freakin' surreal. Jesse wondered what the odds of this were – wondered fleetingly if Heisenberg could've actually calculated them. He remembered him mentioning, once, that he'd tried to calculate the odds of meeting Jane's dad in a bar on the night she'd died –

No, that line of thought was forbidden. He was alarmed by how quickly it had resurfaced, just by seeing a face from the past.

Gary rang him up at the counter, his hands shaking a bit when he took Jesse's money. They avoided eye contact. Finally, as Saul handed him his cinnamon rolls and his change, Jesse spoke.

"Sorry for punching you in the face," he whispered, almost inaudibly. There was no one in line behind him, and this gave him courage. "And for kicking you, and stealing your gun. And your car."

Gary looked horrified for a moment, but incredibly, his face softened and smoothed over, and his lip twitched upward, just a bit. "I'm sorry too… for everything, kid."

Jesse shook his head as Brock ran over to them. "Not the kid anymore," he countered, feeling childish as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but having felt, at that moment, that it needed to be said.

"No," Gary agreed, looking at Brock in some surprise. "I guess you're not."

Brock recognized him – of course he did – but other than the slight widening of his eyes, he was too shy and too weary to give any other sign. Jesse wondered if anything could surprise Brock anymore.

Jesse nodded, just a bit, and threw his change into the tip jar.

As he and Brock crossed into Wyoming, trying to pick their new names and Jesse fighting hard to convince Brock of the merits of Ronaldo, for the first time, he felt something like closure.


End file.
